Posted
by
EditorDavid
on Saturday December 02, 2017 @02:34PM
from the wrong-trajectory dept.

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica's report on Russia's failed attempt to launch 19 satellites into orbit on Tuesday:
Instead of boosting its payload, the Soyuz 2.1b rocket's Fregat upper stage fired in the wrong direction, sending the satellites on a suborbital trajectory instead, burning them up in Earth's atmosphere... According to normally reliable Russian Space Web, a programming error caused the Fregat upper stage, which is the spacecraft on top of the rocket that deploys satellites, to be unable to orient itself. Specifically, the site reports, the Fregat's flight control system did not have the correct settings for a mission launching from the country's new Vostochny cosmodrome. It evidently was still programmed for Baikonur, or one of Russia's other spaceports capable of launching the workhorse Soyuz vehicle. Essentially, then, after the Fregat vehicle separated from the Soyuz rocket, it was unable to find its correct orientation. Therefore, when the Fregat first fired its engines to boost the satellites into orbit, it was still trying to correct this orientation -- and was in fact aimed downward toward Earth.
Though the Fregat space tug has been in operation since the 1990s, this is its fourth failure -- all of which have happened within the last 8 years.

"In each of the cases, the satellite did not reach its desired orbit," reports Ars Technica, adding "As the country's heritage rockets and upper stages continue to age, the concern is that the failure rate will increase."

It's not even a joke. Baikonur is in Kazakhstan, nor Russia, but it was in USSR. Most of Russian space know how is derived straight from USSR base.

Having to rework every little bit about launch trajectories for a new launch site is a difficult thing, and someone clearly fucked up here by assuming that "it always worked before". Because it did, back in Soviet days.

There is a weird statement in the original coverage from Ars. Having initially explained that the reason for the failure was due to an incorrect configuration setting, the quote then goes on to show where Ars states, "As the country's heritage rockets and upper stages continue to age, the concern is that the failure rate will increase."

But the nature of this specific failure mode has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the rockets or stages, but was due instead to one or more lapses in pre-flight checks of the configuration parameters for the launch. We don't even know for sure if the part which failed (the Fregat Upper Stage) was set by the launch agency directly, or the satellite manufacturer.

In a similar way, the comments also imply that the vehicles themselves age in some way - despite the fact that the cost and complexity of them means that they are literally custom-made for each launch. They are certainly not left languishing "on the shelf" for months or years before use.

Don't get me wrong, any launch failure is unwanted and to be avoided at all costs - regardless of the nationality or company involved. But in this case, I'm not sure the coverage reflects reality.

Ahhh! And some insight into the roots of some "Fake News" becomes apparent.

Agreed, totally, with 'ytene', and generally, with 'rmdingler'.

The "Fake" part is that it is apparent that some reports expect us to believe that, even though this launch is (new), that there is something 'old' causing issues.
Shame on the initial reporter to suggest or imply that an old program is to blame.
More like new personnel doing poor jobs putting this rocket together.

But the nature of this specific failure mode has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the rockets or stages, but was due instead to one or more lapses in pre-flight checks of the configuration parameters for the launch.

Either that, or this was a test of a FOBS (Fractional Orbit Bombardment System)....

While that sounds right, and I thought the same thing at first, it may be that they also have newer upper stages with better error detection electronics.

We don't know. It might be accurate and a clue where they said too much, or it might be a mistake of translation or reporting.

Just because it is "custom made for each launch" doesn't mean all the parts were manufactured this year. Also, we don't know if the parts they claim to use are really the parts they do use; and they provide their own oversight so no

If you have a proper educational system, new people will pick up old systems as they enter work force and work on them in entry level jobs doing those menial things you need to do to keep them maintained under tutelage of experienced specialists.

This is actually a major problem point for Russia, and likely one of the strategic reasons US decided to pick a major fight with Russia now, rather than earlier or later. Soviet Union collapsed in early 1990s, and with it, the education system and the "university to

It's not always about uniting the public through an external enemy. Sometimes it's just finding an excuse for those hyper-expensive defence programs. IMHO China isn't there yet with its military hardware, while Russia which is putting out new military hardware and making a big noise about it (maybe some exaggeration included), it just what the doctor ordered.

The rocket was Russian, but the satellites that were riding on it were from various countries: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/russian-rocket-launch-1.4422547 "The booster also carried 18 micro satellites built in Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States."

This is user error. It's like going to Google Maps and plugging in a route for New York to Atlanta when you live in LA, and then wondering why you don't have directions to Denver. Then you drive around aimlessly looking for the tunnels, end up in a bad neighborhood and get robbed.

It happens to me every time I use Google Maps for directions, because I keep location off until I need it, and I'm usually indoors with no GPS (and I don't let it use network location) and so it thinks I am starting from wherever I last used the GPS. Which is usually some remote place in the mountains, wherever I was parked when I returned to my vehicle and turned of GPS.

Unlike the Russian rocket though, it updates automatically as soon as I walk outside.

It's exactly how the Russian specialists are educated in Russian universities.

Being a Russian I have seen the tests for exams of "Automatic control theory". And there was a test "There is a satellite with given moment of inertia and given torque from thrusters. Turn the satellite 30 degrees".

The NORMAL technical decision is "Give it some thrust and wait until it turns in position when it's expected to be slightly before the needed target position after braking. Then turn thrusters ON and OFF according to t

Actually this is fairly typical of rocket science, at least as I understand it. Spacecraft are complex systems where they only way to avoid catastrophe is to get an almost incomprehensible number of easy-to-overlook details right. Maybe it's the unit conversions, or the temperature rating of the booster O-rings, or the combustibility of cabin materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere.

Maybe this is not what we programmers would technically call a "programming error", although other people might characterize it that way, but it comes from a practice that is all-too-familiar: cutting values from one source and pasting them into another, something you do for convenience but which opens the door for details to be wrong in an unexpected way.

From what I can tell, the programming on the spacecraft functioned fine, and operated according to the time-honored "garbage in, garbage out" principle. It was given instructions to orient itself towards Earth and ignite its engines, and it did. Those instructions were wrong, but that is very much a configuration error, not a programming error.

Reminds me of the time I ruined a contractor's demo. He had written a ballistic missile program that I had prototyped, and I was ticked that I did not get to write it myself (petty, I know). When they let me try it out, I deliberately picked a target that his software could not find the solution for - locking up the demo.
I just shrugged and gave the "French salute" (at the time, the French salute was a form of shrug with both hands held at shoulder level) and departed the demo.